posted at 12:56 am on November 14, 2006 by Ian

San Francisco radio talk show host Melanie Morgan appeared on Hannity & Colmes tonight to discuss Nancy Pelosi’s hypocritical politics. The topic was the minority leader’s pork barrel spending, but Morgan brought up the Napa Valley vineyard Pelosi owns and the people who work for her. Last week, The American Thinker wrote about the people Pelosi hires.

Remember Linda Chavez? Chavez withdrew her nomination for Secretary of Labor after she acknowledged sheltering an illegal immigrant. But since she has an “R” by her name, the rules are different.

Update (Michelle): See-dubya notes in comments below that the Investor’s Business Daily editorial linked by The American Thinker doesn’t level a direct charge that Pelosi hired illegal immigrants. Here’s what it said:

As Peter Schweizer notes in his best-selling expose of liberal hypocrisy, “Do As I Say (Not As I Do),” part of the fortune of this defender of the working man is a Napa Valley vineyard worth $25 million that she owns with her husband. The vineyard produces expensive grapes for high-end wines. Napa grapes bring up to $4,000 a ton compared with $300 a ton for, say, San Joaquin grapes.

But Pelosi, winner of the 2003 Cesar Chavez award from the United Farm Workers, hires only nonunion workers and sells these grapes to nonunion wineries. [….]

Which makes Pelosi’s steadfast opposition to any attempts to enhance border security and stem the flow of illegal immigration into the U.S. all the more interesting since she seems to be among those rich employers who financially benefit from a steady supply of cheap foreign labor. [….]

Nor has Pelosi been a fan of employer sanctions against the hiring of illegal aliens. In 2003, she accused immigration officers of conducting “terrorizing raids” on Wal-Mart stores that led to the arrest of more than 300 illegal aliens.

Loraine Stewart, a farmworker advocate with Napa Valley Community Housing, in a 2004 San Francisco Chronicle article estimated that half of the migrant labor force in the valley consisted of undocumented workers, without whom “not one bottle of wine would get made here.”

Breaking on Hot Air

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

San Fransciso radio talk show host Melanie Morgan appeared on Hannity & Colmes tonight to discuss Nancy Pelosi’s hypocritical politics.

Name a position Pelosi has taken that makes her a hypocrite due to illegal immigrants working in her vineyard, which you have no proof she was aware of. She’s not a Republican and therefore she did not run on a “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS GET EM ALL!” platform.

Comprehensive immigration reform calls for these people to be legalized.

I should state that in this case, Pelosi is rotten to the core. There’s a good book detailing Comrade Pelosi’s various shenanigans called “Do As I Say” that provides all the dirt. She breaks more laws than she passes as a legislator.

You see, Linda Chavez wouldn’t have been in a position to turn the US into North Mexico. Pelosi Galore, on the other hand, is not only in a position to do so but to turn the “North” into the same “North” that exists on the Korean peninsula.

I’d call for an investigation into every worker in her vineyards, but it seems the President supports her on this, so what would be the point?

Oh wait…there is no need for Presidential approval or even a majority approval to open an investigation. Get corruption and hypocricy OUT of my government!

Hmm, conflict of interest statutes would also apply to anyone who owns an interest in a company that hires illegals but still votes on illegal immigration legislation (no matter what their personal views are), no?

But what about her pledge to “clean house?” We know she’ll get away with it. Is there one honest politician left who puts the long term interests of the people ahead of their own quest for power and money?

Am I the only one who (seriously) think Pelosi may be pure evil? I just feel like when I look at her, there is some kind of real evil behind her eyes. It could be just all the work she’s had done that has turned her in to the offspring of Michael Jackson and…. I don’t know… maybe a skeleton, I’m not sure.

But seriously, does anyone else get that vibe from her? And Alex Jones and the rest of the conspiracy theory crowd say that Bush and all the world’s leaders worship Moloch and the giant owl statue, and of course Satan, at Bohemian Grove aner perform mock sacrifices, etc.!

If I was to believe that about any of our pols, it would be have to be Pelosi, Byrd, Hillary, Boxer… maybe Schumer, and I’m sure there are some others who give off that weird vibe.

Who cares if every vinyard uses illegal labor? Does that make it OK for the House Speaker’s vinyard to use illegal labor? Is she excused? I can’t believe we’re even having this discussion. I’m going to start drinking again.

“Name a position Pelosi has taken that makes her a hypocrite due to illegal immigrants working in her vineyard…”

1) “End the culture of corruption” … while breaking laws, hiring illegals, and enjoying the benefits of “cheap foreign labor”… want to bet she isn’t paying even the current minimum wage?

2) (from the link) “But Pelosi, winner of the 2003 Cesar Chavez award from the United Farm Workers, hires only nonunion workers and sells these grapes to nonunion wineries.” So, friend of the Union workers, as long as she doesn’t have to hire any… not hypocritical?

3) Hasn’t she claimed that companies (say, Wal-Mart) should be forced to provide health care for thier workers? Anyone want to guess is she leads by example on this? Somehow I doubt she’s providing health care for illegals. A bit of a stretch, but sounds like “do as I say, not as I do” to me.

Of course you can’t run a profitable vinyard while giving all your farmhands full benefits packages. But you can’t run a big-box store (Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart) with the benefits plans that the Democrats have claimed should be required either. And with Napa Valley grape prices, I bet the vinyard could come closer to the break even point.

4) (also from the article) “Nor has Pelosi been a fan of employer sanctions against the hiring of illegal aliens.” Now this at least isn’t hypocritical. It is crooked though, unless there’s another definition for “trying to stop enforcement of a law you are currently breaking”…

Now hypocrisy doesn’t require illegal behavior, so much of this (aside from hiring illegals) isn’t against the law. But hypocritical? Damn straight.

Name a position Pelosi has taken that makes her a hypocrite due to illegal immigrants working in her vineyard, which you have no proof she was aware of.

well. the most obvious thing here is that SHE IS BREAKING THE LAW by hiring them in the first place!! it makes no difference what “position” she’s taken. And because she is a Democrat, she gets a “get out of jail card” for free. THAT’S what makes it hypocritical.

omprehensive immigration reform calls for these people to be legalized. — Grebrook

I’d agree to that, but only if one of them gets to take your place. :-) — SouthernGent

…ever the voice of reason, Gent. I’d take in three illegals for the Greebster…if Mexico promised to take *ALL* of him…now….

We work out an exchange program: three of your indigent, under-educated, stoop-labor peons for every one of our fey, “hypocracy”-spouting Lefties. It would, as Will Rogers said, raise the IQ of both nations.

…after we’ve exported enough of them there, they’ll be able to organize and aggitate to get the Southwest back, preying on all that “victim-culture” stuff they use up this side fo the border, fulfilling their “anti-American Dream”.

…then, we can declare war on ‘em as the citizens of a belligerent country and wipe ‘em out.

This is not new. I recall reading about Pelosi and her husbands questionable hiring and business practices a year or so ago on various sites, and again during the recent senate debates on immigration. Nobody cared, and it was put back in the closet. Now it’s an issue? As to the MSM holding Pelosi’s , or any other dems, feet to the fire- your’e kidding, right?

And as someone very familiar with wine-grape growing: the company hires a labor contractor. The labor contractor is SUPPOSED to hire only legal workers. Whether they do or not is of no consequence to the vineyard owner-the labor contractor will take the flack. I’ve only seen one union labor contracting company, and I’ve only seen one labor contracting company that did not (knowingly) hire illegals… But since the unions are now pushing for amnesty too, it’s a moot point. I just wonder who the hell unions are supposed to be looking out for.

One other issue for Nancy Pelosi. I hate to pick on her, but it’s just so inviting. As they say in the military, it’s a target-rich environment. With Nancy Pelosi, another big issue is the environment. She always makes statements that, with us, the environment is not an issue, it’s an ethic, it’s a value. Which is a nice way of saying, “I love the environment, but not when it comes to our own businesses.” A lot of people don’t realize that, in 1996, Nancy Pelosi and her husband and fewer than 10 other partners wanted to build a golf course and country club outside of San Jose, California, called the CordeValle Country Club. In order to get approval to build on these 275 acres, they had to comply with some very stringent county environmental regulations. Now the California tiger salamander and the Western pond turtle are apparently endangered species and they’re very, very common on these 275 acres that the Pelosis wanted to develop.

So the agreement they struck with local regulators was, we’ll build the golf course, we’ll set up some holding ponds and we’ll create a natural habitat to make sure that these environmental endangered species survive.

Of course, they built the golf course. It opened in 2000. If you want to join, the membership is $250,000. But they never followed the environmental regulations. The ponds were never built for these endangered species. For seven years, they also failed to file any of the environmental reports required by the California Fish and Wildlife Commission. A 2004 County Environmental Compliance Report found all kinds of environmental problems on the Pelosis’ golf course.

I think Rove thought it was common knowledge how corrupt this woman is…

Remember Linda Chavez? Chavez withdrew her nomination for Secretary of Labor after she acknowledged sheltering an illegal immigrant. But since she has an “R” by her name, the rules are different.

To be fair, a couple of Clinton appointees were also forced to withdraw their nominations due to hiring illegal aliens. I think one of them was Zoe Baird, who was a Clinton nominee for AG before Uncle Janet finally got the job.